Helping Trees Heal Large Old Wounds- Tree Pouches

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&ar=1579015090031&video_id=RFgIIpJ210E[/youtube]

This is a video I made of a red maple that had an old wound from a cut made too far away from the trunck which caused a lot of rotting wood, resulting in a tree pouch forming when the rotting wood was removed.

I used a stick to scrape out the rotting wood, which can be applied to the food forest or garden. Scraping out this rotting wood will help expose the living hard wood which will help minimize additional rot and disease issues.

The resulting tree pouch accumulates water in the bottom which may cause problems, so I am planning to cut a small slit in the bottom of the opening to let it drain out.

This tree pouch also took me back to being a kid and hiding things in them and looking for hidden treasure.

Thank you for posting about this; I learned a lot. I am wondering if, instead of cutting a slit to the bottom of the hole, you could drill a small hole that sits a little lower than the bottom of the big hole and angle it upwards into the big tree hole bottom to allow any water getting in to drain? My thinking is that a small hole may cause less damage for the tree to repair than the slit going down.
Again, thank you for posting about this. I love trees and always enjoy learning about them.

Annie Collins wrote:Thank you for posting about this; I learned a lot. I am wondering if, instead of cutting a slit to the bottom of the hole, you could drill a small hole that sits a little lower than the bottom of the big hole and angle it upwards into the big tree hole bottom to allow any water getting in to drain? My thinking is that a small hole may cause less damage for the tree to repair than the slit going down.
Again, thank you for posting about this. I love trees and always enjoy learning about them.

This is a timely thread because I have a lot of small snags in the back that have hollowed out and hold water, in which mosquitoes can breed. I was thinking of drilling holes in them, too, to drain the water.

Annie Collins wrote:Thank you for posting about this; I learned a lot. I am wondering if, instead of cutting a slit to the bottom of the hole, you could drill a small hole that sits a little lower than the bottom of the big hole and angle it upwards into the big tree hole bottom to allow any water getting in to drain? My thinking is that a small hole may cause less damage for the tree to repair than the slit going down.
Again, thank you for posting about this. I love trees and always enjoy learning about them.

That's a great idea Annie!

I haven't made the cut yet at the bottom, and I think I'm going to try drilling the hole now instead. Thank you for the recommendation!

I would cut a slit or drill 3 holes



But an idea to consider with the holes is to make it not all thew way to the bottom.. too allow some to top drain... that way you store mycorrhizal inside hollow tree along with all sorts of nutrients:

"Fast forward 11 years to 2018, when I flew to Basque France to attend a conference on pollarding. It was there, surrounded by European foresters, forest engineers and horticulturalists, that everyone had a special place in their soul for heart rot and hollow trees, something I had never encountered before. A prevailing opinion, which I now view as a bridge between forest ecology and horticulture, was that heart rot creates hollows/habitats for all sorts of fauna. In hosting this fauna, the trees become collectors of poo (feces, not the bear). This creates an incredible microbial metabolism in the tree which, when combined with decomposing heartwood full of trapped minerals, supplies a steady amount of organic fertilizer that is slowly released to the base of the tree. Since trees store growth rings in the heartwood on an annual basis, this natural process of decomposition and fertilizing is a renewable. Hollow trees provide their own compost. That’s true sustainability." -Eliza Hog tree farm